Blog Posts About: Social Design

Members Control the Images on 43 Places

I jumped the gun a bit in my initial announcement about 43 Places. So, here is a little look at some of what I think is interesting about it. The concept is essentially the same the same as 43 Things except the things are places, and you either want to go, or have been.

According to the Robots, one of the surprising successes from 43 Things was cheers and how often people use the feature. Cheers are like one-click encouragement -- you click a "cheer this" link to signal a little encouragement or whuffie to the member. On both 43 Places and 43 Things, you can now cheer goals, places and entries.

43 Places has taken the cheers idea and applied it to images for each place. As you can see on pages like this, the image integration in 43 Places is pretty striking. The images come from uploads by member and Flickr, offering a wide selection of pictures for each place.

Each image for a place can be cheered and the most cheered pictures will be the ones displayed for a particular place. France has a dominant image that has been cheered many times and may stay for a while.

I really like using cheers as a way to democratize the visual appearance of the places. Hopefully, each place will eventually have pictures that match with what the members believe to be the most accurate representations of the places.

See more progress on: Cheer Images on 43 Places

Blog-Style Commenting on Ads?

My friend Anthony pointed me to something I hadn’t noticed on the Weblog’s Inc. AutoBlog. In between entries are ads that have blog-style comments enabled.

See the ad at the bottom of this entry on AutoBlog.com for Subaru followed by the link to “Comment on the Subaru Legacy�?. Click the link and you’ll see a page with the ad at the top, followed by comments from real Subaru owners.

Basically, the ad has become a blog entry, where readers can say what they want about the product in the ad. It is run by something called "Focus-ads" whose tag line is “transparency in advertising�?. It appears to be a Weblogs Inc thing.

Could this be a model for the future? I think it's a really interesting way to do blog advertising because it introduces a truly social element to the ad. The ad is not so much about what Subaru has to say, but how it prompts users to say things about Subaru.

Of course, the advertiser assumes a significant risk that the commenters don't turn against the product, creating an ad followed by caustic comments by readers. If that's the case, then maybe its a chance for the advertiser to see what people really think, in public.

I have a feeling that the advertisers who are prepared to take this kind of plunge are few right now, but I bet we'll be seeing more and more take the plunge.

The Weblogs Inc. Star System

A while back, Peter Caputa called me out for not talking about the star system of comment ratings that have popped up on Weblogs Inc blogs. I took notice and have been checking it out. Here is how Jason Calacanis describes it.

The Star System�??as we are calling it for now�??is simple. Our bloggers give readers a star for every good comment they put up. That is, a constructive comment that ads to the dialogue. The blogger doesn’t have to agree with what the commentator is saying, the star is simply the reward for creating a constructive post.

I struggle sometimes with the value of comments. It is not quantity, it quality and let’s face it, there are a lot of brain-dead commenters out there. I think a system like this is moving in the right direction. It gives the commenting community a way to know what is valuable and what behavior to emulate.

You can see the star ratings in action on these entries at TV Squad and Cinematical.com.

Behold the Power of Customer Communities

Nancy pointed me to a great post at Church of the Customer that is all about the importance of customer communities, which was based on a NYT article.

In two cases, the article points to the influence of individuals who have garnered a following in online communities and used that following to serve the customer's needs in new ways.

A quote from the NYT article:

In fact, blogs may be grabbing all the media headlines, but online communities like FlyerTalk are wielding a different kind of influence in the corporate world, providing instant feedback from those critics who marketers have called influencers. Just by logging on, companies can study, learn from and even respond to the cacophony of opinions about what they are doing wrong and what they are doing right without spending a dime on focus groups or market research.

I shouldn't be, but sometimes I'm in awe that companies aren't recognizing, en masse, that the world of communicating with customers is changing.

It makes me think back to the ClueTrain Manifesto, which I'll loosely paraphrase:

Companies need to understand that people are talking about them on the web every day and in a lot cases, laughing about their poor service or products. The question companies should ask themselves is: Do we ignore it? Or do we become a part of the conversation and work with customers to make things right?

A Blog Post Says "Here It Is, Dig It"

A while back I posted about the differences between message boards and blogs. Being that it was one of my most popular posts ever (and something I use in meetings often), I still think about the differences.

It's so interesting to me how their respective design and semantic differences send messages regarding their use. Here are some examples and other thoughts...

  • A blog post says “Here it is, dig itâ€??
  • A message board post says “your turnâ€??

  • Comment implies “if you want, not requiredâ€??
  • Reply implies “I’m not done until you do.â€??

More in the same vein:

  • A blog is my back yard
  • A message board is a park

  • A blog has readers
  • A message board has lurkers

  • A blog is all about ME
  • A message board is all about US

  • When things go quiet on a blog, the onus is on one person
  • When things go quite on a message board, the onus is on everyone

Let Community Members Help with Social Design

Nancy White and I have been working with the March of Dimes on an online community site called ShareYourStory.org. The site has close to 5000 members and has been going since September of 2004.

We’re working on the next version of the site, which will significantly change its design and navigation. This kind of change can be a minefield with some online communities because the members feel intense ownership in the site, as they should. A poorly handled transition can result in mutiny.

Mutiny was never a worry for the "Share" site, but Nancy and I wanted to do what we could to make sure the transition happened *with* the members and not *to* the members. To do this, we did a number of things…

  • We started a new discussion forum in the community called “Coming Enhancements to Shareâ€?? and invited all members to come and help.
  • We posted information about conference calls and invited the members to share their perspectives publicly and privately.
  • We participated in online chats with the members to gather more information
  • Using the new discussion forum, we asked targeted questions about the new design and provided mockups. How could this feature be better?

The March of Dimes staff is also getting involved and asking the members for input on things like advertising.

By being open with our plans and engaging the members, we think the transition to the new design will be a smooth one. The community leaders have been vocal in our planning discussions and we hope they will be evangelists for the change, being positive voices among the membership. We're lucky to have such dedicated and enthusiastic members -- they are an incredible resource.

At the very least, we have opened a dialogue with the membership that will ensure honest, two-way communication during the transition. If needs are not met, the members have an outlet to let us know.

The transition to the new design is coming soon and I’ll surely report back about how it went.